My Grandmother the Bootlegger and Detective Garcia.
Nov 9, 2022 17:50:32 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 9, 2022 17:50:32 GMT -5
My Grandmother the Bootlegger and Detective Garcia.
When Americans think about bootlegging during Prohibition, the infamous Chicago-based gangster, Al Capone, comes readily to mind. Of course, there were small-time bootleggers who worked in the shadows running distribution services in order to make ends meet as well. Unlike Capone, these only drew local law-enforcement attention. My grandmother, on my mother’s side, named Kiteria, who lived in Puerto Rico, was one of them.
She was a single, recently-widowed mother of four kids, my two aunts, my uncle and my mom, and there were no government supportive services at that time on the island. Starvation, or losing custody of her children, weren’t very pleasant options, so she attempted to supplement the meager salary she earned from working as a cook at the town's church, for the Catholic priest, and at the local city elementary school cafeteria, by bootlegging.
She always stashed the bottles under the bed once the supplier delivered them, and was making a nice profit from the difference between the purchase and resale price. Unfortunately, a certain detective, surnamed Garcia, who dreamed of getting a promotion via putting bootleggers out of business, got whiff of her activity, and began snooping, hiding in bushes, creeping around corners, and peeking through windows at late hours of the night. His snooping had gone totally undetected, and he had not approached my grandmother directly until he finally felt that she was guilty beyond all doubt. Then he suddenly appeared pounding at her front-door one late evening.
“What is it that you want at this hour sir?” my grandmother, an extremely pale woman of very short stature, asked suspiciously.
“My name is detective Garcia from the local precinct. I am sorry to be of any inconvenience at this late hour of the day, Señora Kiteria, but it has come to my attention that you are selling liquor illegally on these premises,” he said, squinting one scrutinizing brown eye while arching an eyebrow over the other.
“Me? Selling liquor? You are wrong. I am not selling liquor illegally. Who is it that told you that lie?” she asked while suspiciously gazing around at the adjacent houses.
“I have my reliable sources Senora Kiteria!” he replied smugly, his dark brown eyes shifting from side to side maliciously, and a smug determined grin on his thin lips.
“Well your sources are wrong!” she blocked his view with her small body as he tried to peer past her into the house.
“My sources are wrong you say? Really? Well, if my sources are wrong, then you won’t mind if I come in and do a search, right now, would you?”
“For that, you will need a search warrant, sir! But without a search warrant, there is no way you are going to come into my house and search it! That, I assure you.”
“That might be true now, señora Kiteria, but next time I knock on your door, things will be very much different. You can be sure I will have a search warrant!”
As promised, Detective Garcia applied for a search-warrant. But in the interval, he continued to snoop around her windows in order to peak in. My grandmother saw him, collected urine in a urinal, and emptied it out the window towards where she knew he was hiding in the darkness behind some bushes. Out he shot from the shadows cursing!
“Adios! Detective Garcia! I am surprised to see you behind those bushes. What were you doing there at this late hour of the night!” my grandmother said half giggling. “I didn’t know you were standing there at this late hour!”
“Don’t worry señora Kiteria!” he growled, while placing a finger on one nostril and forcefully expelling the urine that had gotten into his nose. “Don’t you worry!” he continued shaking with rage and wiping the urine from his face and head with a handkerchief. “You win for now. But your celebration will be short. So enjoy it while you still can. I have applied for the warrant and as soon as I get it, I will be back at your front door! Then let’s see what you are going to do.”
That warning made her stop for a while. But as weeks went by without his keeping his promise, she began thinking that maybe Detective Garcia had forgotten, maybe been transferred to another district, or had perhaps been denied the search warrant. Confident that she was right, she resumed the illegal business, when one evening, there was suddenly a loud pounding on the door!
“Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! This is Detective Garcia! Open the door! Now!”
“You again!” my grandmother said.
“I told you I would be back with a search warrant, didn’t I? Well, here it is!” he whipped out the document with a wide triumphant smile on his face.
“Now, you either let me in or you are under arrest.”
As my grandmother opened the door wider, Detective Garcia pushed it and rushed past her straight towards the bedroom like a hound-dog smelling blood, and stood by the bed where he suspected that the evidence had been stashed. Then, after stooping to get a look and seeing all the bottles, he shouted:
“I knew it! I knew you were lying to me! Now I have the evidence I need to put you away!”
As he finished this declaration of victory, my grandmother smashed one of the bootleg bottles she had been concealing behind her back over his head!
“Crrrraccckk!”
“Yyowwwwww! Oh my God!” he cried out as he grasped his head and toppled over to the floor, “Esta muter me ha matado! This woman has killed me!”
“I told you to leave me in peace,” she shouted standing over him with the bootleg bottle she had just brained him with still in her small hand in case he needed a more persuasive demonstration. “Didn’t I repeatedly tell you to leave me in peace? I am a widow with four children to feed and clothe, and I was just trying to make ends meet! But you just don’t care, do you?”
She then hurriedly got rid of the evidence by dumping it in the Latrine as he remained writhing semi consciously on the bedroom’s wooden floor.
The story then flashes forward to a later date when the detective arrived at my grandmother’s after his head had healed. Why he had a change of heart is a mystery to me. Maybe his fellow officers talked him into shame. Or maybe his mother counseled him, or maybe his priest or the leniency of the justice system that had found my grandmother innocent had proven too frustrating. The reason, I guess, will always be open to conjecture.
A few months after the incident, as my grandmother was preparing dinner for her four kids, there was a tentative knock on the door. This time she came face to face with a humble-looking detective Garcia.
“Ah! Detective Garcia, it’s you again! You recuperated eh! But it was your fault. I told you to leave me alone. So what do you want now?”
“No! no, señora Kiteria, I am just here to apologize for having bothered you that way. I was wrong. I should have been after people bootlegging without having such serious economic need such as you. Please forgive me for my stupidly!”
“Well detective Garcia, believe me, it broke my heart to have to hurt you that way! But you left me no choice. Here, come in, have a seat, and let me serve you some chicken soup I was preparing!”
“Gracias señora Kiteria!”
“De nada, detective Garcia.”
COMMENTS (6)
Bernardo Mendes09/19/2021
Awesome story, but now I am really curious to know why did the detective change his mind. Really well written Radrook. Abuelita was the real gangster, who cares about Al Capone.
Radrook09/20/2021
Thanks for the interest and feedback Bernardo. Much appreciated. About why he changed his mind, my mother never told me. So I really don't know. All I know is that she described him as fervently apologizing and saying that he should have known better... Read More
Carol MC.09/19/2021Kiteria! Increíble mujer! Four kids and she kicked ass in those times! I truly admire her.
Thank you for sharing her story, you must be so proud. Wish we could know what made detective García change his heart.....Still I am happy she did and that your grandma could continue raising you mom and her other kids.
Radrook09/20/2021 Thanks for feedback Carol. Much Appreciated. Once my grandfather died from a kidney infection, she was on her own without any government aid. There was a lot of hunger experienced, but she was always there working at the church as a cook and at the school cafeteria and barely making ends meet. True about the detective. If my mom were alive I would ask her. But she is gone and I guess that will remain a mystery.
Martin Green09/19/2021Hi Radrook---your grandmother must hv been something. Enjoyable story w/nice ending. Martin Green
Radrook09/20/2021
Thanks for the feedback Martin. Much appreciated. True, she could have easily abandoned them all and yet chose to take on that onerous task. It is a nice ending and I truly wish I knew why that detective had a change of heart. I figure that maybe he received advice from his own mother who maybe admitted that she had bootlegged to help raise him at one time? LOL!
JD09/12/2021That was a fun bit of family history, Radrook. I'm glad your grandmother was able to continue providing for her family, and Det. Garcia was not too badly injured. My guess is that he did not actually have a search warrant and just pretended in order to catch her, and was subsequently reprimanded by his superiors. Thanks for sharing this intriguing and entertaining true life story on Storystar. Hap...
Radrook09/15/2021
Thanks for honoring my story with the Story of the Week award. Much appreciated. Also, your suggestion that Detective Garcia was just faking a search-warrant is a very good one. :>)
Radrook08/31/2021I meant to write, esta mujer, not esta muter.
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BEN BROWN08/31/2021 Ben Brown
A great story. I love detective adventures. Well done.
Radrook09/05/2021 Thanks for the feedback Ben. Very much appreciated. The story is based on what my mother described had happened.